A guest of mine, Brian Kerestes, took one of our recipes, the Blueberry Almond Pound Cake, and adapted it for the holidays. He eliminated a few things and added a few. After trying it, I came up with three suggestions of my own which I have shown in parenthesis. One comment, don’t wait till the holidays to make it; he came up with a winner! (The only area of real departure-- I missed not having nuts. I’d take 1T of Butter and melt in on the stove, add 1T of brown sugar and stir till bubbly, then add a ¾ C of chopped pecans stirring to coat. Dump out on a piece of waxed paper and let cool for a few minutes. Then, after spraying the bundt pan, spread the pecans on the bottom before pouring the batter on top as directed below.)

Ingredients

Cake:

¾ cup butter softened

6oz cream cheese softened

1 ½ t cinnamon (1 t of cinnamon)

½ t nutmeg

1 t vanilla

½ t orange zest – he used the dried, Valencia Orange zest, which I found at Wal-Mart… (but I didn’t think it was quite strong enough. I would suggest using however much fresh orange zest you can get off of one orange.)

2 C sugar

4 eggs

1 ½ C all-purpose flour

1 ½ t baking powder

1¼ t salt

10 oz fresh cranberries or frozen whole cranberries (not thawed). (I used 6-8 oz of dried cranberries the first time I made this. See photo above. Soaked them in hot water for a few minutes, then patted them dry. I made this in April and couldn’t find fresh or frozen cranberries anywhere. Since then, I buy a mess of cranberries at Christmas and freeze them for this recipe and others. If you use frozen cranberries, I had to bake it for 75 minutes. Using dried cranberries it was ready to come out of the oven at 60 minutes.)

Orange Flavored Glaze:

1-2 C Powder sugar

2 T Orange Juice

Instructions

Heat oven to 350 degree.

Combine butter, cream cheese, sugar and cream/beat until fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time and beat.

Add baking powder, salt;, cinnamon and nutmeg and beat briefly.

Add flour and mix on low speed.

Hand mix in orange zest, or it will all stick to your beaters.

Grease a 12-cup bundt cake pan and pour ½ the batter into it.

Flour the frozen cranberries and fold into remaining batter.

Add remaining batter to bundt pan.

The cranberries have a tendency to sink and most will end up on the bottom, or top of the cake when you flip it. Bake for 60-75 minutes.